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In: technologies, tools, usability

Correcting text created by OCR (optical character recognition) is a great project for crowdsourcing because it can be isolated and scaled. Essentially, it can be made into a small task and the overall need can benefit from loads of small contributions, made through the small task interface. A great deal of digital library work can’t be sliced/scaled/isolated like this, and with so much work to do, it’s always nice when something can involve others for the benefit of everyone. The National Library of Finland recently came out with new games-as-tools for correcting OCR text, and their website explains: We need your help. Most of theRead More →

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In: UFDC, usability

The URLs for the UF Digital Collections are now shorter and easier. The new programming, by Mark Sullivan, to support simplified URLs: Shortens the base URL for UFDC Prevents server names from showing (an ongoing issue during the major server move) Removes the need for the aggregation code type indicator (the a, c , g, or s to indicate the aggregation between the “?” and “=”) Removes the requirement for the aggregation query (which is “?=” and very confusing) Enables the ability to assign new, persistent names for aggregation codes With these now in place, the persistent URL displayed for the main collection pages haveRead More →

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In: design, FDNL, serendipity, UFDC, usability

The UFDC Programmer, Mark Sullivan, put a browse by thumbnail cover in place not too recently, but so many other wonderful items have been loading and so many other improvements have been made that I’m just now catching up to mention the cover browse. The cover browse allows anyone to see the thumbnail images for the covers or first pages of all issues/volumes in an item. This means users can browse all of the first pages of a newspaper or all of the covers of a journal. The cover browse is an excellent example of elegant simplicity. It uses existing information and functionality–the thumbnails forRead More →